Archive of: Events

Caledonian Conservation Ltd is proud to sponsor the Tay Landscape Partnership Buildings for Biodiversity Conference, to be held at Perth Concert Hall on 9th November.  As people expand urban environments and develop new areas for natural resources such as renewable energy, it is becoming increasingly clear that segregation of wildlife and development is not realistic;  instead, we need to ensure biodiversity benefits are integrated in to these projects.  This conference therefore tackles an important and very current topic.

While developments offer obvious challenges for wildlife, there are many opportunities to benefit biodiversity.  Tay Landscape Partnership pioneered a landscape scale approach to identifying these opportunities with their Buildings for Biodiversity and Tay to Braes projects, which we are proud to have contributed to at Caledonian Conservation Ltd.

The conference programme is wide ranging, covering wildlife law and development, mitigation and enhancement for species, or broader biodiversity opportunities such as green roofs.  The speakers are from an equally diverse range of organisations, including Gaia Research, Swift Conservation, Police Scotland, and Arc Architects Ltd.  Pioneering and inspirational urban ecologist Dusty Gedge will also be giving a talk on Nature-‘based Solutions in the Urban Real.’

As well as the main presentations, there will also be a series of shorter talks including one by Caledonian Conservation Ltd Director Chris Cathrine, as well as Butterfly Conservation Scotland, Inchture Parish Church, Hillcrest Housing Association, Bat Conservation Trust, and the local Amphibian and Reptile Group.

For more information on the event, visit the The Tay Landscape Partnership Buildings for Biodiversity Conference website.

For more information on the landscape scale biodiversity work Caledonian Conservation Ltd completed for Tay Landscape Partnership’s Buildings for Biodiversity and Tay to Braes projects, download the report from our publications page, or directly here: Cathrine, C., Flood, E., Norris, G. and Johnston, S. 2015. Tay Landscape Partnership: Habitats and Buildings Survey. Caledonian Conservation Ltd, Hamilton.

All loaded up and ready to go – Chris Cathrine, Director, and Carolyn Gillen, Ecologist form the advance Caledonian Conservation team heading for the 29th GWCT Scottish Game Fair at Scone Palace in Perthshire.

Loaded up with all the components for our trade stand, Chris and Carolyn are in charge of setting everything up ready for the Fair opening on Friday June 30th. If last year is anything to go by, the Fair will play host to over 33,000 visitors for a three day celebration of all that rural Scotland has to offer.

Members of the team will be on hand over the three days to meet friends and clients, old and new and to offer expert ecology advice – or even just a chair for weary legs.

So if you’re coming along, don’t forget to visit the Caledonian Conservation team on Stand 22a Stag Row.

For more information on the Scottish Game Fair, visit:  www.scottishfair.com

The Caledonian Conservation team will be out in force at the 29th annual Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) Scottish Game Fair from 30 June to 2 July.

We will be hosting a stand at this prestigious country show, billed as ‘Scotland’s most popular outdoor event’, which is held within the parklands of the historic and scenic Scone Palace in Perthshire.

Our stand will be manned over the three days by Chris Cathrine, Director; Liz Coiffait and Julie Smith, Senior Ecologists; Carolyn Gillen and Steven Johnston, Ecologists and Joanne O’Hara, Administrator who look forward to meeting past, present and future clients.

By attending the fair we look forward to establishing new relationships with those that are responsible for the management of estates and other land in Scotland, who may need professional ecology advice, as well as developers, surveyors, wildlife societies and others that have countryside affiliations. With members of the team specialising in everything from wildlife and habitat surveys to Ecological Impact Assessments and Habitat Management Plans there will be plenty of expert advice on hand for visitors to our stand.

If you’re at the fair be sure to come and see us at stand S22a on Stag Row. See you there!

For more information on the Scottish Game Fair, visit:  www.scottishfair.com

For more information about GWCT, visit:  www.gwct.org.uk

Caledonian Conservation Ltd is proud to sponsor The Wildlife Information Centre (TWIC) 2017 Spring Conference, to be held in Musselburgh on 29th April.  The topic, Farming and Biodiversity, is always important but is brought in to sharper focus with the uncertainty created by Brexit.

Farming and biodiversity are an essential partnership – farming cannot succeed without the ecosystem services necessary to support it, such as pollination (by wild solitary bees, bumblebees, beetles, flies, butterflies and moths as well as domesticated honey bees), soil creation and recycling (by a variety of worms, springtails, symphylans, fungi – the list goes on!), clean water and natural pest control.  Farming can also offer excellent opportunities to support biodiversity, for example birds (breeding habitat for farmland bird species, nesting opportunities for owls, foraging habitat for raptors and owls), mammals (foraging and roosting opportunities for bats), reptiles (hibernation sites in walls and foraging opportunities in field margins), amphibians (ponds and a mix of farmland habitats can be excellent for great crested newts), invertebrates and plants.

Reflecting this, the conference has a superb and varied programme with talks on soil communities (by Dr Tim Daniell of University of Sheffield / The James Hutton Institute), grey partridge conservation (by Fiona Torrance of The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust) and great crested newts (by Pete Minting of Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust) amongst other topics.

Of course, members of the Caledonian Conservation Ltd team will also be at the conference, so it is an opportunity to learn more about the work we do.

The conference is free to attend, and includes a buffet lunch.

For more information on the programme and to book, visit the TWIC website.

We hope to see you there!

We are pleased to be working in partnership with Doune Community Woodland group again this year to run more kids nature workshops over the summer holidays.

This year we are focussing on three areas that local parents though their children would be particularly interested in - trees, ponds and minibeasts. We are running seperate workshops for pre-school kids and primary school kids, and thanks to funding from Forestry Commission Scotland these are all free.

Anyone is welcome to attend these workshops, and you just need to book your free spaces via EventBrite - see attached poster for more information on how to book. The timetable is as follows:

Wed 3rd Aug: 

10:30 - plants/trees for pre-school kids

14:30 - pond dipping for primary aged kids

Thurs 4th Aug:

10:30 - pond-dipping for pre-school kids

14:30 - minibeasts for primary aged kids

Fri 5th Aug

10:30 - minibeasts for pre-school kids

14:30 - plants/trees for primary aged kids

Director Chris Cathrine had a great time last week teaching two courses on great crested newts for CIEEM.

The first course covered ecology and survey techniques, and included practical hands-on sessions on newt identification and surveying skills. The second course went into more depth about great crested newt assessment and mitigation, and included a wide range of scenario-based group activities. 

Feedback from the two courses was great, and we hope to run more in future. Comments included "Excellent comprehensive guidance all round", "very knowledgeable and personable tutor" and "catered for a wide range of people with different backgrounds and experience".

As well as running courses via CIEEM we are able to provide courses to other organisations and individuals, so why not have a look at our training page at http://www.caledonianconservation.co.uk/services/training/ to see what else we offer.

Here at Caledonian Conservation we are passionate about sharing the outdoors with other people, and work with groups as diverse as schools, woodland groups, mental health services and ranger teams.

Forestry Commission Scotland support a fantastic scheme called Outdoor and Woodland Learning (OWL) Scotland which we are keen to get involved with locally. OWL groups aim to increase opportunities for outdoor learning, and each individual group does this differently to meet local needs. There are OWL groups in lots of parts of Scotland, but there isn't one in the Stirling/Falkirk/Trossachs area currently. So, we are working with other local interested individuals and organisations to look at the feasibility of setting one up. If anyone is interested in joining in, please just get in touch and we'll add you to the contact list.